New and Upcoming Releases For the Week of April 19 - STEPHEN SONDHEIM ENCYCLOPEDIA, FANGIRLS Cast Recording, and more!

Need something new to read, watch, or listen to? Check out this week's list of new and upcoming releases!

This week's list includes The Stephen Sondheim Encyclopedia, the original cast recording of Fangirls, and a book of interviews with Broadway's leading men, including Joel Grey, Ben Vereen, Norm Lewis, Gavin Creel, Cheyenne Jackson, and Jonathan Groff.

Check out the full list below!

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Films Now Available:

Annie Get Your Gun

1950 musical film based on the Broadway musical. Score by Irving Berlin. Directed by George Sidney (Busby Berkeley and Charles Walters uncredited). Betty Hutton, Howard Keel, Louis Calhern, Keenan Wynn, Benay Venuta, J. Carrol Naish. Color. New 4k restoration from the original nitrate technicolor negatives. Bonus material: Susan Lucci retrospective and intro piece (from 2000 DVD release); outtakes: "Let's Go West Again" Betty Hutton, "Doin' What Comes Natur'lly" Judy Garland, "I'm an Indian, Too," Judy Garland, "Colonel Buffalo Bill" with Howard Keel and Frank Morgan; stereo audio pre-recording session tracks including There's No Business Like Show Business featuring Judy Garland; theatrical re-issue Trailer (HD).

Purchase on Blu-ray.

Broadway Melody of 1940

1940 MGM musical film. Fred Astaire, Eleanor Powell, George Murphy, Frank Morgan. Directed by Norman Taurog. Music by Cole Porter (including "Please Don't Monkey with Broadway," "I've Got My Eyes on You," "Begin the Beguine"). New 4k restoration from nitrate preservation elements. Extras: making-of featurette Begin the Beguine (hosted by Ann Miller), Our Gang Comedies: The Big Premiere; MGM cartoon: The Milky Way; original theatrical trailer (HD).

Purchase on Blu-ray.

Books Now Available:

100 Playwriting Challenges

By Eric Webb with Christopher Holoyda. Foreword by Ken Davenport.

What resources are out there for playwrights to "stay in shape" with their writing? Is there anything out there to help these theatermakers focus, practice, and tell stories? 100 Playwriting Challenges features a collection of exercises and prompts designed to jumpstart imagination and kick that daunting blank page to the curb. From challenges on character to scene-starters to revisions, this book will provide the tools and resources playwrights need to kick-start their next creative adventure.

Purchase on Kindle.

Magnum Opus: The Cycle Plays of Eugene O'Neill

By Zander Brietzke

An analysis of Eugene O'Neill's unfinished cycle play project, which he worked on from 1935 to 1939. A series of plays that would trace the history of an American family through several generations (including A Touch of the Poet and More Stately Mansions).

Purchase Hardcover Book.

The Stephen Sondheim Encyclopedia

By Cincinnati theatre critic Rick Pender

Detailed and comprehensive reference devoted to musical theater's most prolific and admired composer and lyricist. Entries cover Sondheim's numerous collaborators-from composers and directors to designers and orchestras; key songs; major works; Sondheim's mentoring by Oscar Hammerstein II and his early collaboration with Leonard Bernstein; profiles of the actors who originated roles and sang Sondheim's songs for the first time. Features a detailed biographical entry for Sondheim, a chronology of his career, a listing of his many awards, and discussions of his opinions on movies, opera, and more.

Purchase Hardcover Book.

A Wonderful Guy: Conversations with the Great Men of Musical Theater

By Eddie Shapiro

Follow up to the author's 2014 book Nothing Like a Dame: Conversations with the Great Women of Musical Theater. Never-before-published interviews with some of Broadway's leading men, such as Joel Grey, Ben Vereen, Norm Lewis, Gavin Creel, Cheyenne Jackson, Jonathan Groff.

Purchase Hardcover Book.

Upcoming Music Releases:

Fangirls

World premiere cast recording of score by Yve Blake, based on the Australian stage musical. Yve Blake, Chika Ikogwe, Kimberley Hodgson, James Majoos, Sharon Millerchip, Ayesha Madon, and Blake Appelqvist. Produced and mixed by David Muratore. Vocal arrangements by Alice Chance. Zara Stanton is music director and provides additional vocal arrangements.

Purchase on mp3/at iTunes.

Petula Clark: In Copenhagen 1958-1960

From the archives of the Danish Broadcasting Corporation, dating from 1958 to 1960. A part of Petula Clark's career that to date has remained relatively unknown and unreported outside of Scandinavia. This specially compiled album features 23 recordings all of which are previously unissued on CD and unheard since their original broadcasts. Digitally remastered from the original master tapes. Selections from four Petula Clark television specials recorded and broadcast exclusively in Denmark over a two-year period. Musical accompaniment by Bent Fabric and His Quartet. Highlights include "The Folks Who Live on the Hill," "Over the Rainbow," "I"ll Be Seeing You" and "Among My Souvenirs". Strictly limited to 500 units only.

Purchase on CD.

Curtain Call Mixes

Lewis Flinn's hand-selected compendium of curtain call cues From Broadway productions of The Little Dog Laughed and Lysistrata Jones; Off-Broadway productions of Mondo Drama, Mr. & Mrs. Fitch (Second Stage), The New York Idea (MCC), The Busy World Is Hushed (Playwright's Horizons), Show People (Second Stage), Die Mommie Die, The Third Story, and The Divine Sister; and regional productions of The Imaginary Invalid (The Cleveland Playhouse), Jerusalem (The Cleveland Playhouse), and A Comedy of Errors (Hartford Stage).

Upcoming Book Releases:

Anne Frank & Emmett Till: Why I Wrote the Play Anne & Emmett

By Janet Langhart Cohen

Cohen wrote the play Anne & Emmett, which has been performed across the U.S. since 2007 (the play is also being published in paperback and Kindle format). An effort to reveal how some of the people the author has known and the seminal events she experienced enabled her to link together, in an imaginary conversation, the seemingly disparate lives of Anne Frank and Emmett Till, two iconic figures who were murdered by societies that couldn't protect them.

Purchase Hardcover Book.